Note: This chapter is in first person, Pattie's point of view. Enjoy!
I could sit here for hours, rocking back and forth. The chains creek quietly as I kick at the dirt beneath my feet, my head hung low. I miss the way things used to be in this place, the way everything used to seem so simple, so easy. Not long after my mom's passing they ripped up the entire playground, replacing the old stuff with new colorful plastic slides and swing sets. It was supposed to give the area a homely look but personally, looking around at the rust on metal, I feel more comfortable like this. Every spot on this city, this Earth, it used to seem so much simpler. I wonder if that changed because I grew up, or if things really did worsen on their own.
It seems like I've lived two completely lives. Like before my mom died and after are two completely different universes. My aunts changed a lot; I think they both used to be a lot more easygoing, especially about Wicca, but especially with my Aunt Paige. Sometimes I think they're unfair to her because she's not Mom, because she died and Aunt Paige was brought into their life. They try to be sisterly towards her, but it's hard on both of them.
I'd give anything just to have it all back.
Darkness makes a pool of blackness around me. Street lights are on outside of the area, absorbing what little amount of black they can, but I sit amid a hole of emptiness, trying to process how things could end up like this.
My head aches from crying but it's the only thing I can think to do anymore, the only thing I can comprehend. I don't know how I'm going to get home now, and if I can't get home, where I will go. All I know is I can't face them, especially not her. It might just do some irreparable damage.
When the clacking of boots clicks on the sidewalk my heart nearly stops. I have a brief breathe of relief because I know there not my mother's, she was more known for high heels not boots, but they belong to another member of my family. I come close to falling off the swing, but I manage to jump to the safe ground and make a run for it. The only thing stopping me is the 3 ½ foot fence separating me from the outside world. As I go to climb over it, I feel a pair of hands grab me by the shoulders. "Oh, I don't think so!"
Aunt Phoebe pulls me back down with a half-angry half-sympathetic look filling her brown eyes. There's no use trying to escape her, she knows Tae Kwon Do. So I walk away from her and reluctantly resume my hobby of swinging absently back and forth. She sits on the swing opposite me, waiting.
"You followed me." I don't look at her.
"I didn't need to," she replies dryly. When I finally look up, confused, she replies. "You always want to come here whenever you're upset, something about this place calms you, I could never figure out exactly what it was." Pondering that, I try to take myself back to this place at a younger age. She's right, and I can't believe I forgot about that. No wonder I am always bringing my cousins here, it reminds me of my childhood, that's why I came here now.
I rack my brain for an answer, "This is where mom brought me after Grams died, it was right after they built this. It was the only place I really had her all to myself when I was really young."
Aunt Phoebe switches topics on me, "Why did you come back here?"
I shrug, "It was the first place I could think to run."
"Not this park," she says, "this time."
Holding my hands up in defense I mutter, "Your guess is as good as mine." Aunt Phoebe glares at me and I give her a better answer. "Magic screwed me over."
"How so? Because with magic, spells always—" she asks.
"I know, I know," I interrupt, "spells always have their own way of working out. Just because I grow up doesn't mean I forget." She grabs my hands in hers, and I know how badly she'd like me to be as open as the seven-year-old she left back at the manor, but there's so much I can't share with her. "Aunt Phoebe, if I tell you why I cast that spell I might just mess up my entire future, and I don't know if I'm willing to risk that."
Minutes pass before she can gather up a reasonable answer, so my aunt switches to guilt. "You broke your mother's heart, you know, running like that. She doesn't know what she did wrong, but she knows there's some reason you didn't want to be near her."
My hands run over the cold metal chain. "She didn't do anything wrong."
Aunt Phoebe isn't buying it. "Well, then why did you just leave like that?"
"It's not that simple."
I can feel her eyes on me and it's much harder to resist spilling everything to my aunt. If I look her in the eyes, I'm done for. There have been millions of these talks over the years, and even when I say I'm never speaking to her again or I'm not in the mood to talk somehow the minute her compassionate eyes reach me there are no secrets. She's persuasive that way. Suddenly she switches topics on me again and although I'm grateful, I wonder if she's trying to use some sort of reverse psychology on me; I wouldn't put it past my Aunt Phoebe. "You really are like her; I can't believe none of us saw that," she rambles on.
I kick my feet, creating a cloud of dirt. I wish I could disappear.
Like magic.
"I was kind of surprised you didn't. I left mom clues when I told her my name and when I was from but she didn't get them until she saw the birthmark," I explain. "Little Pattie saw it too."
Aunt Phoebe raises an eyebrow at me, "So you…or she rather, she knows who you are?"
I didn't think of this. I'll admit I was a clever child, always keeping it to myself at first when I knew something I thought no one else did because it made me feel smart. "She knows I'm not from this time, and that I know a lot about her, but you know me. How much I really knew of anything you could never be sure. I played dumb a lot."
"That's very true," she agrees.
I nod, standing and moving over to the bench where parents watch kids slide down the slide and play in the castle. Aunt Phoebe follows me, almost reading my mind. She sits down and folds me into her arms, letting me rest my head on her shoulder.
"You've been through a lot haven't you?" she asks calmly.
"More than you know," is all I can manage.
"All we want to do is help you," she reminds me, holding me tighter.
"You are without realizing it," I assure her pressing my face into her shoulder. I take a risk with this and continue. "Aunt Phoebe, you've been one of the only constants in my life and whenever I needed you, you were always there. I learned a great deal from watching you."
She releases me long enough to give me a wide smile, taking pride in this. For awhile I think no one ever really let her know what an asset she was to have, especially after the straggling intensity between her and Mom right after she moving back from New York. The credit is long overdue, and I have to remind myself to tell my aunts how much I love them when I get back home. If I get back home. "What did I teach you?"
"A lot about spells," I answer, thinking of the crumpled paper in my pocket and add, "Even if I mess them up once and awhile."
"So you didn't want to come back here?"
"It wasn't my first option, no," I laugh. "I was just as surprised as you were not to be in 2008 anymore."
As we sit I watch the stars, remembering when I used to lay outside in the summer with my mom aunts and watch them. Vaguely, I can remember something Aunt Piper said about telling the stars your secrets and they would never say a word. Each star would take one of your secrets and because there were millions of stars, you always have at least one to listen. I tell Aunt Phoebe my recollection of this and she laughs lightly, ruffling my hair.
"You would remember that," she snickers. "Piper comes up with the strangest, yet most comforting things."
"She still does."
Aunt Phoebe watches me for a moment; I wonder what's on her mind. "You still have a lot to explain. A lot of secrets you need to be telling us. We're better than stars, we can talk back."
"Do you want me to change my future?" I scoff back before thinking. She's taken aback.
"If we're going to get you home we need to know what we're facing," she guesses, I can sense anger in her, not because I won't talk but because I'm giving her an attitude.
"Look, I know what I'm dealing with, you don't need to. You just need to get me home!"
"If you're upset because you messed up a spell, Pattie, you need to get over that," she tells me and I get off the table, feeling something rising within me. I try to suppress it. "Get over whatever teenage problem you have with your mother and learn to talk to her!"
"I can't, I don't know how!" I admit. Frustrated and confused, she sighs heavily.
"Well, why not?" I can't contain this anymore. So I say what I can't take back.
"Because in my future there isn't a mom for me to talk to!" I scream.
She stops immediately, going dead silent. Her hearts breaking too by this, it was what I wanted to avoid. Everything I want to avoid keeps going in reverse direction and coming at me with an impact. Now it's too late. She knows, despite any denial that might be here, Aunt Phoebe knows the brutal truth, but she doesn't reply to me. I see remnants of the purely destroyed woman that was there when Mom died forming now. I hope I haven't made a mistake.
"I want to explain to you more of this, Aunt Phoebe, but right now I need to go somewhere to clear my thoughts and decide if there's any truth I can save to keep our future from falling apart," I decide, and she nods, taking my hand. I tell her where I want to go and she agrees. We head off in that direction.
She doesn't say anything the entire walk, and when I get there I tell her I'll get my own means of getting home. We come to the conclusion that no one can know what I told her and after a moment of her holding me, cherishing the one piece of her sister that she'd have left, she starts walking back to the Manor, cautiously looking over her shoulder to make sure I'm still here and unharmed with ever few steps.
I really hope she holds true to her promise and doesn't tell Mom or Aunt Piper. One unstable person is enough. Keeping true to her word is in my aunt's normal code, but grief can do a lot of unexpected things.
As my feet sink into the damp soil of the graveyard I tightly wrap my arms around my body, shivering. I don't know why; it's not cold and I'm not scared…or at least not a lot anyway. I never much feared graveyards, but with all the spirits floating around cemeteries, I'm a little edgy. I owe Aunt Phoebe for this, for not asking me too much, for listening, for doing all things now she that she's done as I've grown up. The number of things I'm going to have to explain to my family later keeps piling up one by one, but maybe I can remedy some of that now.
Some of the headstones are faded and eroding away, victims of time. There are too many of those, sometimes I believe time really is worse than demons, death and all of the other terrible things we face in life.
The muddy ground is trying to capture me but I keep forcing forward, I know the path by heart now, after all these years. If I can't face my mom then there's only one other person to go to, even if he can't talk back.
My father.
Unfortunately, just as I reach the plot where his gravestone is perched, I realize I'm not alone.
My mother.
It almost makes me laugh to realize this is the first time I've had my parents together since I was five, figuratively speaking anyway. But I can't even crack a smile. She's in a state I've never seen and never in a million years even believed to exist. I watch her, hunched over and crying as she runs her hand down the marble stone and through the spaces of the message: Andrew Truddeau 1969-1999. Beloved son, brother, fatherI remember when the Truddeau's found out about me, the long lost daughter. Oh how Dad had been thrilled, his mother said. Dad's mother, Elizabeth, who was genuinely touched to hear that my middle name had been for her.
When I was little and Andy walked back into our lives right as I became associated with magic, I couldn't understand why Mom couldn't tell him, why she wouldn't tell him who I really was. I was heartbroken. She knew that in some way he'd fall so in love me, his family, which he'd want to risk everything to protect including his own life. She didn't want to take that from him, to steal his freedom and obliviousness to the magical world. Well, he found out about magic, and then when Aunt Phoebe had a premonition of his death, he found out about me. Mom told him as a last resort to keep him away so I'd have a father. But he knew it was his destiny, and he saved us.
I don't always grieve for the dad I never got to know and then when that chance was given, the one I lost. The Truddeau family couldn't cope and moved out of state not long after and I don't know much else about him. But I feel a tear run down my face as I watch her stroke the limestone grave.
"Oh, Andy, where did I go wrong to make my own daughter hate me?" she cries, unable to find any traction and not noticing me. "She's beautiful, that's for sure, our little girl, and powerful to get all the way back here. But why would she not want to be near me?"
My throat feels dry and I don't know what to say, but I still do, "I don't hate you."
She looks up, startled, but relieved all the same. "Looks like great minds think alike, huh?"
I want to smile, for everything to be okay, but every time I convince myself to act one way my emotions shift and I'm rendered speechless. "I could never hate you," I repeat, "ever."
For a minute she considers what I said and then reaches her hands out to me. I shrink back and immediately regret it, but I'm too grief-stricken to do much else. Defeated, she replies sarcastically, "Just like Sam didn't love your grandmother and then didn't try to hide it."
Another pang of guilt rushes through me. Of all people she mentioned Sam, Aunt Paige's father. I can't continue that discussion any further as a risk of unearthing a truth that needs to stay buried. "He had his reasons," I say cryptically. Oh, if she only knew. I'm hurting her, it's clear from the glazed over stare in her ice blue eyes that she feels guilty for what she thinks she's going to do to me. "Mama," I whimper softly, I haven't called her that since I was a toddler. "You could never do anything to me that would make me hate you. You're the best mom in the entire world, everything you ever taught me I will always keep with me. I am so lucky that I have you."
I mean every word of it.
"You won't even let me touch you," she mutters helplessly.
"I'd feel it then." I begin to cry.
"Feel what?"
"The love, the compassion, every little ounce of affection you have for me and it might just hurt too much," my words come slowly and separated through sobs. What I don't say is something I never reflected on before, how having her after all of this might tear me apart worse than not having her would.
She moves toward me, catching on to every word, "Something has happened, hasn't it?"
A release of blame is clear, and I'm happy she's starting to realize that it's me, not her, that's at fault here but if my mother figures out more the cost might be far greater that I can imagine. "I…I can't."
"Please, Pattie, don't be afraid of me, talk to me," she begs, summoning me to her but I'm rooted to my spot, paralyzed by fear. The pain is so inundating that I can't move. "Sweetie, please."
"I love you too much to do that to you," I protest. She's just being the caring, sweet person that she is prying into my life; it's her job after all. That's such a lie though; I don't want to tell her not because it's going to hurt her but because it's going to just add to my heartache.
I don't see it coming when she grips me by the shoulders and stares me straight in the eyes, pressure bearing down on me. "Patricia, I love you and no matter what you tell me I'm not going to be upset."
"You don't know that—," I try to interrupt. She silences me.
"It means a great deal to me that you care about my feelings but I'm your mother, Pattie. There isn't a thing in this world you can't tell me and I can help you. That's what I'm here for." Even as I try to look away she tenderly touches my face, turning it back to her. "I'm your mother. I'm supposed to worry about you. Not the other way around."
As a child I told my mom everything under the sun. She got a personal recap of every school day, every detail and I never hid a thing from her. Of course, I hadn't had time to hit the teenage stage before she was gone but I think that deprived me of the one thing all other teenagers have, the ability to lie to their own parents. With my aunts that's a different story, but my mom?
I don't know if I can bring myself to tell her something else besides the truth.
So instead, I reach the breaking point.
Her grasp on me tenses when I begin to shake. It becomes sheer panic, and then I start to scream. I'm calling her name even though she's right there, crying buckets, and trying to fight her away. There's no possibility of controlling myself, because as I try to hang on I slip away more. I wanted this so much 24 hours ago, and then I got it and now I'm pushing her away. Realization never struck about how hard it would really be to face someone I lost and then know I'm going to have to lose her again.
I can't bring myself to let her comfort me and I can't live without her.
There really is no winning with me.
No matter what she keeps her grip firm. I feel her pulling me closer, embracing me, smoothing my hair, shushing me. And as I scream and tell her to let me go, my mom hugs me closer. I feel like I really am shattering.
"Why did you have to go, please don't die!"
I don't even realize I've actually said it out loud until I calm enough to see her staring at me wide-eyed.
"Please don't die?"
Okay, first off, sorry it took so long for the next chapter! This one's a little shorter but I've been tied up with schoolwork and stuff. I hope you all like it, keep reviewing. A special shout out goes to PirateQueen716, she knows why! I decided to write this one in first person because I really wanted to get Pattie's vision on it all. What do you think, you like it more this way? I'm planning on going back to third person but your opinions matter so speak up! Support means more chapters! I can't promise one soon but it should be within a week, just get on my back about it if I start taking too long!